Day by Day Cartoon by Chris Muir

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

We started looking into health insurance through the "marketplace", since we can't afford Cobra right now. All the web sites referred for us require a phone number before you can look at pricing, so I put in my FAX number.

Turns out to have been a smart thing to do - I've had at least 100 calls come in on the FAX line since yesterday.

I picked up a couple before the machine could try to connect - dead silence even after I said "Hello". For the couple that did connect me to a human, I told them this was a FAX line, and please don't call back.

There must be a whole lot of potential profit for the insurers in getting someone to sign up for them to be so persistent...

Monday, March 23, 2015

Just finished reading L/ B. Johnson's (Brigid's) "The Book of Barkley".

She put into words so many things I have thought and felt, but have not written. She brought me to tears at the end - having had to part with several pets under similar circumstances, I know the pain of loss.

Friday, March 20, 2015

From November to April, hundreds of manatees huddle in the warm
discharge canal of one of Florida’s biggest coal-fired plants, the Big
Bend Power Station near Tampa, as camera-toting families point and laugh
from a viewing deck at the gentle creatures lolling near the smokestacks.

Some
two-thirds of Florida’s endangered manatees rely on discharge waters
from power plants for winter warmth, according to federal biologists.
It’s a fact that congressional Republicans are seizing on to challenge
the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s agenda to fight climate
change, a plan to slash carbon emissions that could forcelarge-scale closures of coal plants.

So, if we want to save the manatees, we need to keep the Florida coal plants running - or, we could do a truly green thing and replace these plants with nukes burning thorium...no evil CO2, lots of warm water - and cheap, clean power...

New Jersey’s ridiculous gun laws have once-again turned a law-abiding citizen into a convicted felon
over nothing more than an innocent mistake. This time the victim is a
former security guard and aspiring police officer named Steffon
Josey-Davis.

Josey-Davis legally purchased a 9mm Smith & Wesson in 2013. Shortly
after he bought the gun, he made the fateful mistake of stashing it in
his glove compartment to make sure his six-year-old sister wouldn’t find
it.

The gun was still in the glove compartment when, later the same day,
state police pulled him over for driving with an expired registration.
Because it is illegal for drivers in New Jersey to transport guns in
anywhere but the trunk of their car, the officer confiscated the gun and
told Josey-Davis to pick it up at the police station.

When Josey-Davis appeared at the station to retrieve his property, he
was promptly arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm – a
second-degree felony.

Another innocent person's life destroyed because of illegal laws. Go read the whole article.

Recently, I receiveda "Determination" telling us we were ineligible for
unemployment insurance since we had not supplied proof of identification, i.e.,
copies my driver's license (both front and back) and of my Social Security
card. We included all of this in a fat envelope, and paid extra postage
registered mail to P. O. Box 19509.

We mailed this packet over a week ago. Today, I spoke to a
nice lady who has the onerous job of handling calls from irate people like me
who are entangled in the bureaucracy of Illinois unemployment insurance. She
told me that I needed to not only send the information that I had sent, but
also a formal letter requesting that you accept that data and reinstate my
claim for benefits. She also said that the copy of my Social Security card was
not in the scanned-in documents. It was in the packet originally mailed, so
somewhere in your organization, it was lost.

So, here is that letter, asking that you please reinstate my
claim for unemployment benefits, along with more copies of everything, again
sent by registered mail. I am also spending extra for a return receipt, as I
cannot trust your office to handle things without losing pages.

Why it is necessary for a claimant who has records on file
from Illinois employers as to employment history to provide a copy of a Social
Security card that plainly states "FOR SOCIAL SECURITY AND TAX PURPOSES -
NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" is beyond me. Though since I am simply a college
graduate electrical engineer, perhaps I am just too stupid to understand the
marvelous complexity of Illinois unemployment law.

Regards,

Charles A. Kuecker

Enclosed:

Copy of Wisconsin driver's license, both sides

Copy of original Social Security card, front only
(laminated in 1960-something)

Friday, March 6, 2015

After rampaging through Mosul's museum with sledgehammers and torching
its library last month, IS "bulldozed" the nearby ruins of Nimrud
Thursday, the tourism and antiquities ministry said.

Until Muslims stand up to this and end it by killing every "extremist", they are tacitly supporting acts like this.

Civilized religions do not destroy. Unless I see large numbers of Muslims publicly disavowing practices like this and all the other medieval trappings of fundamentalist Islam, I cannot consider Islam a true religion.

Seems I've seen this idea a few places - from a muzzle device that would wipe pig's blood onto each round as it left the barrel, to a booby-trap that could be installed in Israeli buses to douse suicide bombers with the forbidden substance, thereby sending them straight to Hell, no stops for virgin houris...

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Back when I first got signed up with the Science Fiction Book Club, I got a copy of "FROOMB" - a novel by John Lymington. It was a bit adult for a 12 year old, but the title has stuck with me. It refers to a political cartoon of the world at the wheel of a car careening down a slope toward a cliff. The world cries "Fluid's running out of my brakes!".

This graph brings that image back to me - only it's Uncle Sam at the wheel:

By 2030, if nothing drastic is done, all the income of the federal government will go to pay for Social Security, Medicare, and other "entitlements", including, of course, Osamacare, and interest on the national debt. There will be nothing left for roads, national defense, or things like the BATFE and the Border Patrol. Or for presidential golfing trips - but Jugears will be long gone by then. Nancy Pee-Lousy and Hairy Reid will likely be long dead. The rest of us, not so lucky.

FROOMB, indeed.

The spell-checker in the editor tries to change "Osamacare" to "macabre". Smart machine.